Currently, fires damage a significant number of buildings each year. In some areas, periodic forest or grass fires are common and these fires destroy many buildings. The close proximity of houses and other buildings often causes fires to spread quickly from building to building. While some building materials such as concrete are not burned by fire, other building materials such as plywood sheathing are readily burned by fire. The readiness with which common building materials such as plywood burn causes the fires to spread quickly from building to building, and can make the fire difficult to contain as there is a large source of fuel for the fire.
It would be desirable to improve the fire protection which is available for buildings and especially for houses and residential structures as these are often affected by periodic fires. It would be desirable to provide a fire protection device which may be quickly deployed to protect a building in case of an impending fire. Protecting a house from a fire not only protects the house from damage, but also removes a source of fuel from the fire and thereby diminishes the strength of the fire. If sufficient numbers of buildings employ such a fire protection device, a fire could be much more easily controlled and extinguished as it would lack fuel.
Existing fire barriers for houses suffer from drawbacks. One such drawback is the inability to withstand high wind. Some existing fire barriers are constructed with coverings such as covered frames that extend over a house to enclose the house. It has been found that, in many cases, these frames and coverings were unable to withstand the high winds that are often associated with a fire. In some cases, these products made the fire more damaging to the building. Other fire protection devices rely on water or other consumable goods to combat a fire, and require a dispensing system to control the application thereof. These may fail where the supply of the consumable goods is exhausted, where the strong winds that associated with the fire prevent the distribution thereof, or where the fire renders the control system or communication lines necessary thereto inoperative.
There is a need for a more effective fire barrier for buildings. There is a need for a fire barrier which protects a building from burning in a fire. There is a need for a fire barrier which is durable and which is not easily damaged by the high winds and other forces encountered during a fire. There is also a need for a fire barrier which is easily adapted to any building and which does not require specialized building construction.